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Chief Lame Deer
(1900-1970)
Warriors Citation
John Lame Deer, an Oglala Lakota spiritual leader, recalled the suffering among the reservation-bound Lakota early in the
twentieth century. In an interview with historian Peter Nabakov, he agonized over his inability as a medicine man to cope
with the new maladies affecting his people: "There were twelve of us, but they are all dead now, except one sister. Most of
them didn't even grow up. My big brother, Tom, and his wife were killed by the flu in 1917. I lost my own little boy thirty-five
years ago. I was a hundred miles away, caught in a blizzard.
A doctor couldn't be found for him soon enough. I was told it was the measles. Last year I lost another baby boy, a foster
child. This time they told me it was due to some intestinal trouble. So in a lifetime we haven't made much progress. We medicine
men try to doctor our sick, but we suffer from many new white man's diseases, which came from the white man's food and white
man's living, and we have no herbs for that." From: historical accounts & records
LINK TO BRAVEHORSE WARRIORS VOLUME TWO
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